The furniture, of oak, is plain and spare to the verge of a gaunt severity, and there is not one single picture-frame on the wide expanse of wall.  On the table are a few books and some letters, with foreign postmarks, and addressed in the crabbed handwriting of Continental scholars.  Over the table a brazen lamp hangs suspended by a slender chain.  In a corner are some fragments of stone mouldings and wood carvings like the panel of an ancient pew.  There are no shelves and no bookcase.  Besides those on the table, one volume lies on the floor, which is without carpet or covering, but absolutely clean:  and by the wall, not far from the fireplace, is an open chest, ancient and ponderous, in which are the works of the Fathers.  The grate has been removed from the fireplace and the hearth restored; for in that outlying district there is plenty of wood.  Though of modern make, the heavy brass fire-irons are of ancient shape.  The fire has gone out—­the logs are white with the ash that forms upon decaying embers; it is clear that the owner of this bare apartment, called a library, but really a study, is not one who thinks of his own personal comfort.  If examined closely the floor yonder bears the marks of feet that have walked monotonously to and fro in hours of thought.  When the eye has taken in these things, as the rustle of the brown leaves blown against the pane without in the silence is plainly audible, the mind seems in an instant to slip back four hundred years.

The weary curate has closed his eyes, and starts as a servant enters bringing him wine, for the vicar, utterly oblivious of his own comfort, is ever on the watch for that of others.  His predecessor, a portly man, happy in his home alone, and, as report said, loving his ease and his palate, before he was preferred to a richer living, called in the advice of architects as to converting the ancient refectory to some use.  In his time it was a mere lumber-room, into which all the odds and ends of the house were thrown.  Plans were accordingly prepared for turning one part of it into a cosy breakfast parlour, and the other into a conservatory.  Before any steps, however, were taken he received his preferment—­good things flow to the rich—­and departed, leaving behind him a favourable memory.  If any inhabitant were asked what the old vicar did, or said, and what work he accomplished, the reply invariably was, ’Oh! hum! he was a very good sort of man:  he never interfered with anybody or anything!’

Accustomed to such an even tenour of things, all the vis inertiae of the parish revolted when the new vicar immediately evinced a determination to do his work thoroughly.  The restless energy of the man alone set the stolid old folk at once against him.  They could not ’a-bear to see he a-flying all over the parish:  why couldn’t he bide at home?’ No one is so rigidly opposed to the least alteration in the conduct of the service as the old farmer or farmer’s wife, who for forty